Can I Request Rent Compensation For Months Of Breathing In Carbon Monoxide In My Rental?

Looking for advice on tenants rights regarding CO poisoning and smoke/CO detectors in Philadelphia.

My roommate (26F) and I (26F) moved in to our 3 story/finished basement rental row home mid October and have been having issues with our landlord even before we moved in. It has become apparent that he’s not really concerned with the quality of the house and is always cutting corners but now that this is unraveling we’re worried that he may be cutting too many and putting us in danger. I work from home and am here most week days all day long.

Rewind back to October when we first moved in- we assessed the situation regarding all detectors in our house to find that there were none on the first floor or basement (only wires where they should be) and that the smoke/CO detector located on the second floor was dead. The only working smoke detector was in my bedroom on the 3rd floor. Upon finding them in this state we immediately contacted the property manager and requested that the house be brought up to code. We are not allowed to contact the landlord directly, all correspondence is through Hubkey.

Fast forward to present and my roommate smelled gas (still not sure what she actually smelled as CO is odorless) so she called PGW Monday night around 9 pm. They discovered that our water heater in our basement was pushing carbon monoxide out into our house and turned our water heater off. As it has been below freezing in Philly this last week we urged the property manager to ask our landlord to have it fixed expeditiously as we gathered from Google that this qualified as an “emergency situation” that technically needed to be rectified within 24 hours. He sent a plumber out yesterday, Tuesday, who advised that the water heater needed to be re-vented as it was an issue with the pipes. He quoted our landlord and our landlord denied services because it was “too expensive”. We then urged him to get another quote as we still had no hot water and no prospects of it getting fixed in the immediate future. A new plumber came today and reiterated the same thing to me. He showed me the setup in the basement and kept saying that “the thing is so illegal” and no where near met coded regulations. Regardless of if the pipes were vented properly, there were multiple holes “repaired” with duct tape and the actual pipe was slashed in half and just resting on the cut. He also pointed out to me that our HVAC is in the same closet and has been circulating CO throughout our whole house.

Since moving in we have had consistent migraines and light headedness. This past Saturday my boyfriend was visiting and had trouble breathing. As soon as we left my house he was fine. We both have experienced extreme fatigue as well and have noted how it has been more difficult than usual for us to get out of bed in the morning. As my roommate and I both are diagnosed with depression we assumed we were in a prolonged episode and that was the reason for our lethargy. I also have commented on how my vision has been getting worse (which could just be true) but being exposed for long periods of time could also explain vision blurriness. It seems like dots are connecting now on why we have been feeling so terrible for seemingly no reason the past couple of months.

Although our landlord finally approved the repairs (I suspect that because the plumber was so blown away by how bad the situation was down there and the fact that PGW had tagged the case, that it convinced our landlord to stop penny pinching and try to get it covered asap) we still feel that we were put in a dangerous - potentially life threatening- situation due to our landlords negligence. We still do not have smoke detectors in our basement or on our third floor, and our CO detector is still dead despite requesting these things months ago. Do we have grounds to seek some sort of compensation? I don’t want to sue but if we did have a case it would at least give us some leverage to get the months of rent that we paid to live here while being poisoned comped? This just feels like it should not be swept under the rug as a normal occurrence.